Montana Journalism leads
national Hearst competition

By Whitney Bermes
J-School Web Reporter         

photo by Whitney Bermes

Emma Schmautz sits at her desk in the offices of the Kaimin. Schmautz took fifth place in the Hearst Awards with an editorial concerning copyright laws and illegal downloading of music, movies and computer software.

Top finishes by student journalists at the University of Montana have the school in first place of the prestigious Hearst collegiate journalism awards.

Seniors Emma Schmautz and Jessica Mayrer, and recent graduate Danny Davis have claimed top-20 places in two different categories in the 48th annual William Randolph Hearst Journalism Award Program. Schmautz and Davis placed fifth and ninth respectively for editorials or columns entered in the opinion category in December. Mayrer took 15th in the In-Depth writing category announced in January with her story about tribal water rights, irrigation infrastructure and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The awards put UM in first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition, ahead of University of Missouri, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northwestern University. UM journalists have accumulated the most points after the first three competitions of the academic year, editorial and feature writing. Jacob Baynham finished fourth in feature writing in November.

Three more competitions remain in the cumulative contest this year: sports, personality/profile and spot news. In seven of the last 10 years, UM has finished in the Top 10 in the year-long competition.

Schmautz’s editorial concerned copyright laws and illegal downloading of music, movies and computer software. The editorial ran in October 2007 in the Kaimin as one of Schmautz’s weekly editorials as news editor.

Davis, a 2007 graduate, spent two years as a staff writer and two years as sports editor for the Kaimin.  His award-winning editorial concerned the hypocrisy of people using “the N word.” Davis wrote the piece shortly after comedian Michael Richards used the racial slur in a performance. The piece ran in a December 2006 edition of the Kaimin.

“Being black, I could write about that,” said Davis, who currently works as a reporter for the Austin American Statesman in Texas, said. “It was relevant. It was kind of fun to write.”

On the radio side, juniors Natalie Neumann placed eighth and Dan Boyce tied for fourteenth in the November Journalism Awards broadcast competition for radio features.

Neumann submitted a compilation of pieces including stories on the donor of a graffiti wall, cartography and the Run for Respect race.

“(The graffiti piece) was by far my favorite piece I’ve worked on,” Neumann said. “It was fun to put together.”

Neumann is a news anchors for KBGA, the college radio station in Missoula, as well as for Montana Public Radio on Montana Evening Edition.

Boyce submitted pieces on a homeless man, UM’s Forrester’s Ball and the new Native American center on campus.

Each month, the program administers a multimedia competition as well as six writing contests, three photojournalism and four broadcast news competitions.  The awards, funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, give out more than $500,000 in scholarships and grants annually.

Back to J-School main page